Jurgemeyer takes crowd on early railroad journey

By Katie Collins Brush News-Tribune Staff Writer

Posted:
03/09/2016 01:00:00 AM MST

The March installment of the Brush Museum's monthly sack lunch program featured a large crowd of nearly 60 who gathered to hear from former Fort Morgan Museum Director Marne Jurgemeyer, as he took the audience on a virtual railroad ride, through pictures and even video, along the first rails and depots to be built through Morgan County. (Katie Collins/News-Tribune)

Another grand crowd of nearly 60 luncheon lovers gathered in the Carnegie Room at the East Morgan County Library in Brush for the March edition of the Brush Museum’s sack lunch program which featured guest speaker Marne Jurgemeyer, a railroad aficionado and long-time collector of train history and artifacts. Last Friday afternoon, Jurgemeyer brought an plethora of pictures, artifacts and even video from his own extensive collection to help take the audience through a virtual tour of the early history of railroads in Northeastern Colorado, providing beautiful pictures of the past that included early train models and even photos of the earliest depots in Morgan County, from the first box car depot tossed out in Brush, to those in Akron, Hillrose, the Union station, Snyder, Weldona, Wiggins/Corona and Fort Morgan. According to Jurgemeyer, from 1860 to 1870, the population of Denver itself increased by just 10 people, showing the desperate need the area held for services the railroads could provide. He noted the first railroad to pass through Colorado came with the Union Pacific company, and 12 miles of that original track still exists near Julesburg.A group of investors out of Denver built the Denver-Pacific line from Cheyenne to Denver, reaching Denver in 1870, while the Kansas Pacific began in 1878. Nearly 1,000 miles of narrow-gauge railroad tracks, of which Colorado is well-known for, was laid down by 1885 and for Northeastern Colorado, railroad construction began in 1880 with the Union Pacific, who laid lines down as far as Union before finishing to Greeley by September of 1881.

Advertisement

The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy line, a.k.a. the Burlington and Missouri River RR, came through Brush and brought about the first depot in Morgan County. The first was simply a box car tossed out near Brush, but soon a wooden depot was built and it was near this time the famed story of the town’s name came about as folks at the depot were asked what they should call the town, and someone noted it ought to be named for, “that cattleman who ships all the cattle here”, a.k.a. Jared Brush. Two major terminals built in the area included not only Sterling’s major stop but also that built in Akron.During his virtual tour of the area in the late 1800s, Jurgemeyer also told the story of an infamous 1904 freight train wreck in Brush that saw one freight train run into the back of a stopped passenger train. The transformation of the area could be seen as well through the pictures that displayed the change of the Brush depots built and in the engine houses, with the last being burned down in the 1940s. From a an early photo of the first train into Akron in 1885, to photos of early trains such as the Denver Zephyr and ‘The City of Denver’, Jurgemeyer provided a picturesque atmosphere of those early days, noting that near 1885, at least 10 trains per day made stops at the Brush station. Jurgemeyer left audiences in awe as he finished with a wonderful black and white video, made by the Union Switch and Signal company, taken on December of 1937 from the windows of a train which made its way between Akron and Denver, showing the new traffic control and signal dispatch technology being used then. It proved the first time centralized traffic control could be done on a large scale, and also took audiences through a picturesque tour of the early rails as they rode through Akron, Brush, Fort Morgan and Wiggins, providing a spectacular first-hand look at the area back then, and of the people, fashions and even automobiles as they were seen to cross the tracks. The next installment of the Brush Area Museum’s monthly sack lunch program will introduce audiences to authors Gary and Margaret Kraisinger as they present on their books which highlight the history of western cattle trails. The duo will present their program on Friday, April 1 (no foolin’), from 12 noon to 1 p.m. at the East Morgan County Library in Brush. The program, as always, is free and open to the public.

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.